At present, garage doors are usually formed of rows of wood panels hinged together by a number of separate metal hinges fastened thereto. The doors also have a series of separately mounted rollers at their edges which run in tracks extending upwardly at the sides of the door opening and horizontally inwardly at the top of the door opening so that the door can be moved upwardly and then because of the hinging arrangement move horizontally inwardly at the top of the door opening. Very frequently such folding garage doors are provided with a remote controlled motor to raise and lower the doors in response to a signal from a small transmitter device.
Such garage doors are both expensive to manufacture both from the cost of the wood and the substantial amount of hardware required in the form of hinges and rollers which have to be individually assembled. Moreover, these doors are heavy and awkward to handle, ship and install. The garage door opener mechanisms to handle such heavy doors require motors of significant torque and relatively heavy duties cables, pulleys or other harness for effecting the door movement.
Further, present such doors require maintenance and painting and, when damaged, cannot readily be repaired as the panels cannot be replaced without the removal and dismantling of the door.
It has also been proposed to provide a continuous hinge between two hinge members by forming one member as a male member with a projecting pintle and the other member as a female member having a socket to receive the pintle.
Such arrangements as illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,567,931, 4,532,973, and 2,968,829 do not provide the requisite freedom of hinge movement with an adequate connection between the hinge members and the hinge axis is offset to one side of the members.